I normally drink 3-4 bottles of Red Wine per week. I also drink the occasional Brandy & Gin & Tonic, but very little Beer or any other Alcohol. If I’m on holiday in Portugal or somewhere with decent Red Wine, it could be a few more bottles.

I drink water. I rather like it! It has to be said that it varies depending on where you are though - some has a horrible humic taste, others can be chloriney ( though that’s usually if they have been working on the pipes). I think overall that slightly hard water tastes best.

I agree on hard water, but seriously: I would have assumed that anyone in this community would regard wine as a normal part of dinner, and am surprised at those who say/claim that they only drink it a few days a week.

I drink squash - purple flavour. The other half drinks orange flavour, so we usually have two bottles on the go at once.

Ooh, a red and a white! How decadent.

Tbf, we drink wine with most meals (especially as it normally takes us 2-3 nights to get through a bottle as we only have one or two small glasses) but sometimes have lemonade or a big jug of iced-and-lemoned water if we’re trying to be kind to our livers (albeit temporarily).

So, I spoke about this topic with @laura when joining the WS Forum…How do you guys manage wine drinking and appreciation and to what extent do you consider general health, it’s effect on any physical activity you do and if relevant, performance in any sport you do?
I’m no competitive sports person but have spent many years learning martial arts, and 5-6 days a week strength and conditioning in crossfit and following a programme set by my coach.
I also LOVE wine, so you see the dilemma. I’m al…

Oh, this is more than a ‘claim’. We definitely don’t drink wine more than 3 times a week- other than on special occasions and/or holidays abroad. We don’t pretend to be Mediterranean (even though I’m originally not far from the Med). We drink soda water with our meals, and I always end the evening with a coffee. One can adore wine, but not wish to drink it every evening. The excitement of opening the next bottle is worth the wait. And as for the quality of sleep on non-drinking nights… I can write poetry about it, but will spare you

As John Cleese so eloquently defined the difficulty of “do I or don’t I” vs “will this wine be good enough”… oh the trickery of the balancing act of life.
“Do not fear death so much as the inadequate life”. Brecht
…I’ll just get my soda topped up and hope for a good choice tomorrow with my barbecue sausages.

For us it probably 2-3 bottles a week on average, and usually drunk Friday-Sunday. We don’t tend to drink at home during the week, but will if we go out During the week dinner tends to be quite light and late or in the office, so generally wouldn’t consider opening any wine. It does mean that we are more than willing to up our spend per bottle for the wines we do open on the weekend!

Ouch! with you on that conundrum! I’m not a medical type, but did lots of training over the years about alcohol and its impact - for my counselling practice. Some info I wish I didn’t know about. Still, all things in moderation is not a bad approach…

There was a study reported in the Lancet on 14 April. It mentioned that in the USA the recommended upper limit for men is (the curiously precise) 196 g per week – about 11 standard UK glasses of wine or pints of beer, and 98 g per week for women, with similar recommendations in Canada and Sweden, while guidelines in Italy, Portugal, and Spain are almost 50% higher than these. UK guidelines are about half those of the US.

The study covered individual-participant data from 599,912 current drinkers without previous cardiovascular disease. It found that alcohol consumption was roughly linearly associated with a higher risk of stroke, coronary disease excluding heart attack, heart failure, fatal hypertensive disease and fatal aortic aneurysm. But it was log-linearly associated with a lower risk of heart attack.

In terms of conclusions, the bad news was that the threshold for lowest risk for all-cause mortality was about 100 g per week, and that reduction of alcohol consumption from 196 g per week (the US guideline) to 100 g per week meant about 1–2 years of longer life expectancy at age 40 years. The (relatively) good news was a suggestion that drinkers of beer or spirits had the highest risk for all-cause mortality.

I conclude that you’re best keeping it down to six glasses a week, unless you have cardiovascular disease in which case you should drink a fair amount more. Oh, and of course you should stick to wine…